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Fifty-Five Characters, Make Sure Every One Helps Create Massive Traffic for Your eBay Listings
Straight from the Horse's Mouth
eBay says 70 per cent of members use the site's search boxes to find items they might want to buy. But the search engine returns only listings containing the actual keywords in the title and ignores keywords in sub-titles or descriptions. The exception is where users actually tick the 'sub titles and descriptions' box, which very few do, to add those areas to the search.
That's bad news, because:
- few sellers realise this and waste time taking great photographs, writing explicit descriptions, paying £££s for those embellishing devices mentioned later, because if their title doesn't contain relevant keywords the listing will be missed by 70 per cent of potential buyers.
- there is no 'sub titles and descriptions' box on the main search boxes, top right and mid left of eBay's home pages or even on individual categories pages such as 'Antiques and Art', only on search boxes in specific sub-categories such as 'Antiques and Art > Antique Clocks'.
- most people presume, as I did, that sub-titles are part of the overall title and therefore search engine sensitive. They are not.
- more than 20 per cent of people search entirely by category (some viewing all listings, most studying just the first few pages). List in the wrong category and you won't be found at all by one in five eBayers, even with the best of keyword rich titles.
2. Not Pictures, Not Highlighting Devices, Not Featured Spots on eBay - What Matters Most to Your Chance of Selling Your Product is Your AUCTION TITLE
Be sceptical to eBay's advice to spend 15p on a gallery picture; have your title printed bold text for 75p; highlight your title for a measly £2.50; get listed in a Featured Category Auction for £9.95; be Home Page Featured for £49.95! None of that helps if your title lacks those all-essential keywords.
Your title is THE most important part of your listing, create a poor one and you're wasting time, money, and virtually every second spent perfecting pictures and descriptions.
Your title must include keywords potential buyers use to find products like yours! This is how to do it:
* Take a pen, paper, brainstorm words to describe your product, start making a list of key words.
* Study completed auctions for similar products, sort 'highest price first', look for common keywords in the top ranking returns. Add these to your list. Vitally Important: Duplicate ALL keywords listed earlier throughout the entire keyword listing process.
* Think like a buyer, that's easy if you know your product well. Imagine yourself describing the product to a friend. Add words used to your list, include duplicates.
* Use the Keyword Suggestion Tool on the eBay.com site. It hasn't arrived in the UK yet, it's great if you list on the US site, and very useful for UK listings. Add these words to your list. Find the tool at: http://ebay.admarketplace.net/ebay/servlet/ebay/template/KST.vm
* Find keywords people use outside of eBay to locate items similar to yours. These searches closely resemble searches used on eBay. Go to www.overture.com, click on 'keyword selector tool' right of page, key words appropriate to your product into the search box, press 'search'. Add the top 100 or so words and phrases to your list.
* Look for sites featuring high in search engine returns for companies selling products similar to yours. Go to www.google.com, key in words to describe your product, click to search. Click to open the first few listings, go to 'View' top of your screen, choose 'Source'. A mass of gobbledegook will appear, it's html, and somewhere you'll see keywords used by those companies whose sites appear high in the rankings. Add these words to your list.
* On the same list, study the bottom line of early listings for actual eBay sites for products like yours. These are regular sellers of items like yours and keywords in those listings are the reason they rank so high. Click through to study these sellers. Add words used in high ranking titles to your list. Click on 'View Seller's Other Items', right of screen, look for multiple listings of similar items. Notice any differences in words used between titles for similar products, add words used to your list. Spot any listings attracting multiple bids, higher prices, add title words to your list.
By now you should have a long list of possible keywords, keep it safe, you will be using it often.
3. Open an eBay Shop - Even If Nothing Sells
eBay Shop owners receive regular reports about sales in general and keywords in particular. It's worth opening a Shop for your regular products, eBay will send you monthly reports featuring sales levels and keywords members used to find your products. Use these keywords in your non-shop listings but remember to check reports often, patterns change and your listings could grow stale.
These are eBay's most important reports for Shop owners:
"Shop Search Keywords Report. Shop Shows a count of how many times a keyword was searched within your Shop. This report includes keywords used for Title searches as well as Title and Description searches. You can use this report to identify which keywords are most frequently searched within your Shop and determine the best words to use in your listing titles and descriptions.
Search Keywords Report. Shows a breakdown of each search keyword that has been used to find your Shop and listings. You can use this report to identify which keywords are most effective in finding your Shop and listings, and then include those keywords in your listing titles and descriptions."
(Source - eBay. http://pages.ebay.com/help/specialtysites/using-traffic-reports.html)
Now On to Where All that Hard Work Will Make Sure Every One of Your Listings Gets Noticed!
4. Create Killer Titles
It's time to make money from your keyword list.
You have just 55 characters to create your title, there's no room for waste, waffle, repetition.
Make sure every one of those 55 characters earns its place. Like this:
* Get a dozen or so highlighter pens, different colours. Starting one word at a time, look for duplicates, use a different colour to highlight any words featuring four or more times in your list. Add these words to a separate list, ranked most often used, down to least frequent.
* Starting highest ranking words first, brainstorm titles for your product, include at least three common words. Use 'telegraphese': eliminate the clutter, delete words like 'a', 'the', 'and'. Use acceptable abbreviations to save space, for example use '&' not 'and', '/' not 'or', 'New' not '**~NEW~**'. Create as many titles as you can because:
* Where you have several similar products or ongoing same product supplies, it's wise to create different listings for each item, using different keywords to attract maximum interest from eBay's search engine. Top PowerSellers say, rather than create multiple same product listings, using one title for ten or so products available inside that one listing, reverse the process and create ten different titles, one for each product. This is best used for Buy It Now and Shop Items or auction items listed sparingly, say at two day intervals. List auction items together and bidding will spread across your auctions and restrict finishing prices.
* Study bidding and sales levels for your own titles, see which work best, cut poorer performing titles, replace with those that perform better.
* Add unused high ranking keywords to sub-titles. They won't show in search listings but they will make your listing look bigger, more important, more likely to be opened.
* Be specific. For example, in 'Doll's, you'll find 'Reborn' dolls, looking like real babies. 'Berenguer' describes a particularly collectable type, 'Reborn' is a term commonly used by collectors. Some potential buyers will use 'Berenguer' or 'Reborn' in their search, some will use both. Add both to your listing for Reborn Baby Dolls bearing the Berenguer mark and you'll appear in all listings for this hugely collectable, regular price breaking doll, and your listing will confront everyone using one or both of those terms. Use 'I NEED A NEW MUMMY' as your title which I just happened to find under Dolls and Bears > Dolls > Reborn (no bids, not surprising), as might 20 per cent of your potential buyers, and you'll miss more than three hundred per cent more visitors.
GREAT BUSINESS IDEA. Specialise in one or a handful of really high ticket categories, where few professional listings go unsold, view by 'Time: Ending Soonest', right of screen and snap up last minute listings of poorly described items that 70 per cent of other people missed. Get your product, go through those keywords listing tips mentioned earlier, attract those 70 per cent of people who missed the item first time round, and you could be one of those sellers having just made:
- £11,099.58 for a 'TINKERBELL REBORN Baby New Sculpt Bereguer preemie' (March 11th 2006)
- £545.00 for an 'LC ~ NEWBORN BERENGUER BABY DOLL REBORN * GERBA DADE' (March 7th 2006)
Tip: The '*' and '~' look superfluous and with wasted space either side could have formed additional frequent keyword terms for this item such as any of the 193 misspellings I found for 'Berenguer' at www.fatfingers.com (More about this later).
- £284 for an 'Orlando a Berenguer Combo Reborn Baby Doll Gerba' (March 5th 2006)
* Use every millimetre of space. Longer titles attract more interest than short ones. Fill surplus space with:
- Power Words like 'Limited Edition', 'Rare', 'Unique', 'One Day Sale', 'Stunning', 'New', 'FREE', 'New', 'Proven', 'Guarantee'. Avoid concocted words like 'Wowee' and 'Yikes' which no one searches for anyway. They might get your listing opened, once found, but they look unprofessional and might also deter more people from clicking through. Other silly space wasting techniques to avoid: 'L@@K', '!!!!!!!!', '+++++'.
- Spell check your title and throw in a few mis-spellings of vital words if space allows. Google says that 33% of all search keywords are misspelled. Check possible misspellings of each prime keyword at www.fatfingers.com. These are mistakes made by sellers, people who should be taking care, you'll probably find many more similar misspellings used by potential buyers. Make a separate list of misspelled words, add one or more to your title. 'Laptop' is commonly misspelled 'labtop', for instance, hence the reason currently 31,992 listings in the UK alone have 'labtop laptop' in their titles. Under Consumer Electronics > Gadgets > Breathalysers (note eBay UK used 's', in the USA it's 'Breathalyzer') I saw a UK seller using 'Z' but not 's' in his listing. He doesn't list in the USA, he's unlikely to sell in the UK, his listing fee was wasted. Use acceptable, commonly used, well-recognised abbreviations, like 'PC' and 'P/C' for postcards, 'nr' and 'n/r' for 'no reserve', 'hb' and 'h/b' for 'hardback.
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